Parkinson Type Design joins Typekit

Rock and roll! The legendary Jim Parkinson, designer of iconiclogotypes and display faces, has partnered with Typekit to bring his unique and powerful fonts to the web. Available today are Cabazon, Hotel (Solid and Open), and the Modesto family, including Condensed, Expanded, and Text (named for its lowercase letters, but still a display face — use it large).

The painterly style of these Parkinson types reminded me of this post I wrote last summer after attending a workshop led by John Downer, and I couldn’t resist putting together a few more examples (demo) of tasteful text-shadow application inspired by Jim’s photography and lettering.

3 Responses

Completely off topic, but out of curiosity, what kind of role does font hinting play on a high-res display like the new iPad 3? My understanding is that hinting is required to keep fonts rendering clearly on the low resolution of traditional displays, but does something like the retina display, especially as those high resolutions become more wide spread in the future, negate the need for such a laborious and time consuming process?

TrueType hinting has no place in high-resolution environments like the iPhone/iPad retina display, and in fact, it has no place in many low-resolution environments. We currently only serve TrueType files to Windows, and even then only for text faces. Display faces, like these from Jim Parkinson, are best served with PostScript-based outlines for smooth rendering at large sizes.

As high-resolution experiences become more common, anti-aliasing-related rendering issues will disappear. However, the clarity brought on by Apple’s retina displays will reveal (and is already revealing) the awkwardness of poorly drawn and spaced fonts. Plus, we’ll continue to have to deal with CSS-related rendering issues.

Tim Brown

Type Manager for Typekit since 2010, practicing typography and web design every day. I write, speak, and make tools to share what I learn. I try to be helpful. I love my wife, kids, family, friends, teachers, and dogs. I'm a volunteer firefighter.